A Deadly Game (35 page)

"I was very angry, but anger came out." Scott did not elaborate, and Brent didn't press him further.

Brent was frustrated when Scott ignored his repeated requests to check Laci's clothing. Brent wanted to see if any items were missing. "I kept asking him, and he wouldn't do it," Brent told Grogan. "Scott seemed uninterested in doing what he could to assist."

Sharon showed up at the house soon after Brent. Scott and Sharon spoke briefly with a neighbor, and then Scott announced that he was going to the warehouse to retrieve some tape so that he could start hanging missing persons flyers. He left around 8:45 A.M., and for the next several hours, his whereabouts were unknown.

I believe that Scott must have used this time to move things around from the night before. We know he returned to the warehouse at some time that morning because the jacket and the lures turned up in the boat. We know the tarp and umbrellas were moved into the backyard. We may never know whether he used this time to dispose of other incriminating items.

Detective Grogan also reached out to Scott's half brother, Mark Peterson. He learned that the Peterson clan wasn't as close-knit as Jackie and Lee had claimed. This was no Brady Bunch story, as the Petersons had been telling reporters.

A sales representative for a packaging company, Mark Peterson had been estranged from the family for nearly thirteen years. A disagreement with his father and his brother, Joe, over the family business had placed an untenable strain on the father/son relationship. Mark said that he and his father had barely spoken since the falling out-that is, until Laci went missing.

Mark had met Laci only three times-once before her marriage to Scott, again at their wedding, and then once more at Thanksgiving dinner that past November. His sister, Susan Caudillo, had hosted that gathering, and Mark and his family had attended. It was the first time in years that everyone was together for the holidays. Mark acknowledged that he and Lee were still on the outs when he accepted the invitation. However, Susan was anxious to show off her new house, and his wife wanted to maintain a relationship with his children's grandfather, so Mark agreed to go.

He was also excited by the news that Scott and Laci were expecting a baby.

"The only thing I really remember is that Laci was pregnant . . . just kind of tired and a little bit uncomfortable," Mark recalled. "I remember her being a little bit on the quiet side that evening. But, there was, you know, a house full of people, so I didn't really...I don't even think I had much of a conversation with her that night."

The next contact Mark had with his family was on Christmas morning, when he was advised that Laci was missing.

"Well, I'm obviously, I'm a little curious about the family dynamics, and I know that Scott was obviously the youngest child," Grogan said. "Jackie had children from another relationship,

right?"

"Through my sister, I did hear that a man and a woman approached Jackie and said, 'We're your children that you, that you adopted out,'" Mark said, referring to Don Chapman and Anne Bird. "Since then, I think that Jackie has tried to kind of stay in touch with them. I don't know any specifics about her past," he explained.

In response to questions, Mark admitted that he actually knew very little about Scott, or about the Peterson family dynamics. He and his siblings, Joe and Susan, lived with their mother growing up, and only visited their dad on weekends. There was a ten-year age difference between Mark and Scott, and the two spent very little time together as kids.

"We always lived in the same town, we all lived in San Diego and we would probably see Scott ah, on the weekends, you know, that kind of thing," Mark explained.

"As a child, what was Scott like?" Grogan asked.

"Well, I was a child when Scott was a child so," Mark chuckled, "I don't know what he was like. I mean he was just a normal kid."

"Lee and Jackie seem kind of protective of him," Grogan said. "Do you know why that is?"

"I think my dad does because essentially Scott... I think he

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raised him pretty much like an only child, really. You know they did everything together. Scott came along at a time in my dad's life . . . when Scott was probably, oh. . . when he got to that kind of really fun age of, like, eight and ten years old, you know, my dad was ... he was doing okay financially then. And I think he was able to kind of spend a lot of time with Scott. I mean, if they traveled, they took Scott with 'em, that kind of thing."

During the conversation, Grogan tried to establish who in the family had been closest to Scott. Jackie's third child, John, had come to live with the family when Lee and Jackie married, and he and Scott had grown up together. John went by the last name Peterson, yet Mark wasn't sure whether Lee had actually adopted him.

Mark believed that John was about five years older than Scott, but had no information about how to reach him.

Grogan was particularly curious about Lee and Jackie's over-protective ways with Scott. The detective explained how they had tried to stop him from questioning Scott at headquarters on Christmas Day. "They came over to the station here when I was talkin' to Scott, and, you know, wanted to pull him out of an interview and didn't want him talkin' to me without an attorney, and didn't want him to take a polygraph test. And it just seemed unusual the amount of concern there. Do you have any idea why that is?" Grogan inquired.

"Well, I can't get into my dad's head," Mark responded, "but we had this case a few years ago ..." He described the murder of Stephanie Crowe, which occurred just inside of San Diego. "The case was thrown out because the judge in fact said you guys [the police] coerced this child, basically, to confessing," Mark said, "and there was a TV movie about it and I'm sure Dad watched it. ... You watch that a week before your own son is being interrogated, I think there's a tendency there."

The TV movie Mark was referring to was The Interrogation of Michael Crowe, a special presentation on my network, Court TV. Court TV was instrumental in obtaining and airing the interrogation video, which led to the suppression of Michael's confession. Some years later, a drifter, Richard Tuite, was tried and convicted of Stephanie's murder.

"Okay, so you don't think there's anything different there?" Grogan pressed. "I mean, what I am struck by is, I don't know the theories." He changed course. "Not too long ago, they gave him twenty thousand dollars for a membership to a golf club."

"Lee and Jackie did?"

"Well it just seems to me that they're very protective of him," Grogan said, "like he's able to get whatever he needs from them." Grogan thought that the Petersons seemed to do "a little bit more in helping him along than, you know, a normal thirty-year-old guy" might expect from his parents. "So I was just kind of curious if there was, you know, something that happened to Scott previously, or if there was some reason that that's going on?"

"Yeah, I don't know, I couldn't help you with that," Mark advised. "I don't think there was anything where they feel like they owe him anything. ... I mean, he grew up in more of a privileged background, you know, upbringing than, than my other siblings did. He grew up in basically the nicest neighborhood in San Diego County, and you know it's probably one of the nicer neighborhoods in the whole country. I think he was just kind of their little, you know, baby

and they . . .

"Like I said, he was kind of raised as an only child. But I'll tell ya, I'm really surprised that they would give him that amount of money for a country club membership. ... I never really thought that they gave him anything.

"I always thought they were very proud of the way Scott went out and worked while he was going to school at Cal Poly, and was able to start a restaurant on his own, and was able to get an education and find a job in Modesto," Mark continued. "They thought of their son as someone who just went out and made his own life. I was under the impression that they were extremely proud of the way Scott was able to get these things done on his own, so when you say they gave him money for a golf club membership, I'm kinda really surprised at that."

"As far as any violence with Scott," Grogan asked, "any violent acts that you're aware of as a juvenile or anything?"

"No, absolutely not. I mean, not even as a, not even as a five-year-old or ten-year-old, I never saw him lose his temper," Mark said.

"Never, even as a child?"

"No."

As the conversation drew to a close, Grogan asked Mark if he had any questions for the police.

"Well I'm curious about reports of Scott's finances. I hear reports of bankruptcy and heavy debt. ..."

"Right now it looks like he is having some financial problems," Grogan said.

"And it doesn't look like the business was doing very well. . . . And then personal debt. . . what we do have shows that he is quite a bit in debt."

"Yeah." Mark seemed to be digesting the information he was now gleaning from the detective. The picture the officer was painting was quite different from what he'd been led to believe by family members. "I guess our concern, the Peterson family concern, is that with all this heavy focus on Scott, that other leads might be put on the back burner?"

Grogan explained that police were working all leads, but had been unable to eliminate Scott as a suspect.

"Would the simple fact of Scott taking a lie detector test and passing-would that be enough to, I don't wanna say clear because I know there's some margin of error, but... is there too much evidence for even a lie detector test passing on Scott's part to clear his name?" Mark asked.

"Right." Grogan replied.

"Scott has chosen his path and declined to take it. I guess I've been wondering if Scott would have just taken this test and passed it, you know, it wouldn't have . . . 'cause I'm real troubled by this, you know. I just don't see his personality as the one that could perpetrate this kind of thing, planned it, you know, especially for monetary gain."

"Yeah," Grogan commented.

"I guess I was looking for a little bit of ammunition to go to my family and say you know what? If he would just do this, it might help things along. But I'm not so sure that's what would happen anyway...

"Well, ah, it certainly would not hurt his position," Grogan said.

In late January, an agent from the FBI interviewed Timothy Caulkey, a childhood neighbor of Scott and the Peterson family. From the time he was about five years old until they moved away four years later, Caulkey had lived across the street from the Petersons. He told the investigator that he remembered Scott's older brother John

[as a troubled child, and recounted several minor incidents of violence and mischief that he believed may have involved John. But there was no proof linking John to these events. More to the point, as the FBI noted, Caulkey "couldn't provide any information on Scott," bell cause "Scott was three years old at the time and Caulkey couldn't remember much about him."

In the coming days, police learned that Scott was meeting with friends to discuss the sale of his home and was looking to purchase a new vehicle. From the wiretap on his phones, police found out about a meeting between Scott and two real estate agents, Brian Ullrich and Brian Argain.

"I want to keep this quiet, obviously," Scott told Argain on one call. "Even if Laci comes back we will not wanna stay there, either way, however this comes out."

"How soon do you wanna look at doing it?"

"I'd like to put it on the market right now," Scott said. "Make sure you keep it quiet. . . . Can I sell it furnished?"

"Yeah, you can."

The police dispatched an officer wearing a wire to the Appetez Restaurant to record the conversation, but very little of it was caught on tape. Police also learned that Scott had been phoning around to local car dealerships, wanting to sell Laci's Land Rover and buy a new truck. Investigators also learned that Scott was planning to travel to southern California to appear on Good Morning America. The show's producers offered to pick him up by limousine, transport him to the airport, and return him home the following day.

Phone records also showed that Scott was planning to spend some time at his half sister's house in Berkeley, California. Anne Bird called Scott early in the evening on January 22, to talk about Scott's upcoming stay. She and her husband, Tim, were departing for Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on a pleasure trip, and offered Scott the use of their home while they were away.

"I'll leave the key under the mat," Anne said, then gave Scott the address. "The house is very distinctive; we just removed a shrub from the front yard."

Investigators listening in on the call observed that Scott was giggling and sounded very upbeat while speaking to his sister. "I will leave Tim's golf club for your protection," Anne joked.

"Ha, ha, ha," Scott replied.

"I just hope that. . . everything just somehow has some miracle ending."

"Yeah, I know it will."

"I mean everything so shitty has happened that something really good must be around the corner." "That's what I'm figuring."

Anne told Scott that she and Tim would be returning on February 2, and he was welcome to stay as long as he'd like. "Have you been sleeping okay?" she asked.